The nabobs of negativism, the panic-stricken shrieks about the Internet becoming full, the fear-mongering about broadband pipes becoming clogged because the kid down the street is running torrents again.  We’ve heard it all before, and as we’ve always said, technological advancement always seems to find a way to resolve the “crisis in bandwidth” before big businesses resolve it themselves by rationing, capping, or overcharging for access.

And so it has again.

AT&T, in association with Corning and NEC today smashed all prior records of fiber optic transmission capacity by successfully transmitting data at 114 Gigabits per second over a single strand of fiber for up to 580 kilometers over an optically amplified link.  The standard fiber optic cable AT&T used for the test contains 320 separate optical channels, meaning through the use of just a single optical cable, it is possible to sustain a transmission rate of 36480 Gigabits per second!

That exceeds by 25% the last record setting transmission rate test and effectively doubles the distance the cable can maintain data transmission rates without unacceptable loss.

AT&T announced the results as part of their technological solution for broadband growth — deploying 100 Gigabit networks across the country to accommodate growing demand for the Internet.

From an AT&T news release:

“IP traffic on the AT&T network is growing at about 45 percent year over year, so groundbreaking research efforts like this are critical to our ongoing efforts to stay ahead of our customers’ rapidly evolving and expanding needs” said Peter Magill, executive director of optical systems research, AT&T Labs. “In setting this new bandwidth capacity record, we used a transmission method that enables better management of the interference that can result from operating 320 wavelengths over a single fiber-optic link. To do so, we used a new way to generate such signals and a new signal-processing algorithm to receive them again. We’re looking forward to further testing of these techniques and the additional bandwidth advances that may come from it”

The laboratory link was composed of seven spans, each containing a single-stage Erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) for both the C- and L-band and a section of Corning® SMF-28® ULL fiber, an ITU G.652 compliant ultra-low-loss optical fiber.

“NEC has been relentless in pushing forward-looking research and development of advanced optical networking technology to help carriers meet the growth in network traffic” said Ting Wang, department head, Optical Networking, NEC Labs America. “This exciting achievement demonstrates the feasibility of packing 320 channels on one fiber with 25GHz spacing”

“There are still several challenges, including maturity and cost efficiency, to overcome before the deployment of such a high transmission rate over a single fiber, but we are definitely closer” added Milorad Cvijetic, vice president and chief technology strategist, Optical Network Systems Division, NEC Corporation of America.

“As the foundation of telecommunications networks, optical fiber innovation can help enable carriers to cost effectively keep up with ever-growing traffic demands”, said Barry Linchuck, director of marketing, Corning Optical Fiber, Corning Incorporated. “Corning’s recent innovation of ultra low-loss, high-performance fiber enables network operators to achieve higher capacities per fiber at the operating distances they need”